1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to apparatus for controlling diets and counting calories.
2. Related Art
Weight control and dietary control are objectives of a substantial portion of the world""s population living in developed countries. Adding machines can be used to add up the calories eaten in a given period if one knows the caloric content of the items eaten.
There are many weight control programs and devices. These programs vary from the fad and crash diets to structured nutritional programs that employ trained health professionals to set up individual weight-loss programs and monitor the individual""s progress. Similarly, weight loss devices vary from appetite suppression diet pills to computer programs that set up nutritional diets.
Each of these programs and devices has shortcomings. The fad diets offer only short-term weight loss. Structured nutritional programs offer healthy diets, weight goals and encouragement to achieve long-term weight loss, but often fail because the individual is not willing to regularly attend a diet clinic or hospital program. Many of the clinics require the purchase of specialty foods and individuals balk due to the added expense of such foods. Diet pills, like crash diets, at best, provide short-term weight loss without any assurance of a healthy diet. Desktop or computer programs are useful in selecting nutritional diets and counting food calories, but due to the necessity of are cumbersome to use and do not provide the goals and encouragement provided by a diet clinic or hospital program.
Counting the consumption of food calories is a common function of many weight control devices and programs. Existing electronic devices count food calories and perform additional functions.
Other programs purportedly assist the user in identifying those situations that prompt the user to eat. Apparently, the program can point out if the user eats in response to stress, anger or other situations. Presumably, once the user is aware of the situations that provoke eating, the user will know to avoid or not eat because of those situations. Such programs may be termed xe2x80x9cbehavior awareness programsxe2x80x9d, rather than the diet and exercise program of the present invention that encourages healthy behaviors and helps the user to establish weight control habits.
In yet another system, that disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,673,691 by Abrams et al. on Oct. 7, 1997 and issued to PICS, Inc., a complex caloric monitor and behavior modification hand held computer system is disclosed which monitors weight, nutrition and exercise and provides visual and audio prompts to tell a user when to eat and exercise and provides suggestions on what to eat, shopping lists and then provides feedback to help motivate the user. This is an overkill approach that is just too complex for most people to follow and much too intrusive. It has not met with significant commercial success.
A better system is needed.
It is in view of the above problems, particularly with the need for a more user-friendly system to assisting individuals with dietary control, that the present invention was developed. Applicant has rethought the approach dietary calculators and taken a fresh approach that does not require users to remember caloric content of various foods. Being able to view the prior art with great skepticism has enabled the applicant to make a system based on use of an icon based device with easy input similar to that used by virtually all computer users with Windows-based or Apple computers.
It is an object of the invention to provide a simplified system of caloric monitoring using icons for caloric addition items (food intake) and icons for caloric reduction (exercise, etc.).
The invention provides this simplified, and thus more desirable and reliable and less expensive system by which applicant achieves superior results. The invention provides a caloric tabulator comprising a small, food shaped disc body, an LED screen in the body, icons in the screen representing caloric intake/output item, selection buttons for moving between icons on the screen, and timer buttons for stopwatch functions.
Thus in the invention is provided a caloric tabulator system which has a self-contained portable hand-held computer having a processor, memory accessible by the processor, and input keys and a display both in communication with the processor; baseline means for receiving and storing basal metabolism rate (BMR) caloric information regarding a user, including input keys for receiving the BMR information and the memory for storing the BMR information; the processor including a processor adapted to calculate a daily and weekly caloric balance and provide output data including icon representations of input function status, a selected one of the calculated daily or weekly balance, and positive feedback or negative feedback to the display responsive to the value selected balance; and the display being operatively coupled to said processing means and adapted to receive and display the output data.
This simplified, and thus more desirable and reliable and less expensive system by which applicant has achieved a superior result should not be interpreted to mean that more complex caloric tabulator systems are outside the scope of the invention since even the producers of more complex systems may now recognize that conventional wisdom was wrong and use the inventive features described below to reduce the commercial disadvantages of their systems relative to the system described herein.